


once a millennium

by cheriecolas



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crying, Drabble, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, canon compliant question mark?, i mean sophie won't confirm RM3 so everything i do is canon. I Am God, post-s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-25 21:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18171857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheriecolas/pseuds/cheriecolas
Summary: Everything was weird and wrong at 2 AM Intergalactic Time on a spaceship, anyway.





	once a millennium

I didn’t think Peter Nureyev cried. I didn’t think he felt much on the ‘negative’ end of the emotional spectrum at all if I was honest. Maybe mild disappointment at _best_ , when a heist went wrong, or angry on my—or Rita’s, or Buddy’s, or Vespa’s, or Jet’s, or the Ruby 7's behalf.

 

But that wasn’t _crying_.

 

I guess I shouldn’t have been so stupid to think the guy didn’t cry. I mean, I do it, more often than I _ever_ would like to, but he just… he never _showed_ anything like it. Not on his face, not with his eyes, not with his words. I thought maybe sadness just wasn’t in his wheelhouse.

 

Everything was weird and wrong at 2 AM Intergalactic Time on a spaceship, anyway. All the hallways shone with eerie greens and blues that looked like how pins and needles felt; the control panels and temperature regulators and oxygen modulators lit up the way in a poor replacement for the day lights. Buddy _said_ it was all important, but I didn’t buy it—mostly ‘cause all the lost space on this dinky ship got me stuck up on the top bunk of _three_. It all seemed useless to me stumbling around in the dark, considering I’d slipped and busted my ass so many times walking blindly that I was seeing stars without looking through the windows.

 

 _All_ I got up for was a drink of water. That was _all_ I did. When I got to the kitchen, I didn’t expect to hear to someone _crying_ as I reached for a glass. It felt kinda shitty to sneak up on whoever it was, but I was still a private investigator at heart. I didn’t recognize the sound of it, leaving four non-Rita people unaccounted for, and I didn’t notice anyone missing from the bunks with my eye glued shut. What else was I supposed to do? It was my soul’s _job_ to investigate.

 

I guess it was ironic that _he’d_ been the one to tell me some things aren’t worth investigating all that time ago, huh?

 

The bathroom door was open, letting cold, fluorescent white light pour into the hallway like a flood. I crept to the edge of it, trying to see in without being seen.

 

There he was. Peter Nureyev; pooled on the tile floor, looking like the world’s most tragic fallen angel. If I squinted, I could see where they ripped out his wings.

 

He had his face and body pressed against the sleek metal cabinet, turned into it like the ice cold alloy would provide the comfort he needed. _I_ could have been giving it, but I just found myself _staring_. His hands grasped at his face like he could push back the tears or wipe them away, but they kept coming faster than he could deal with them.

 

His hair was also a mess, which if I were any bigger an asshole, I would say was the most depressing part.

 

Nureyev heaved and sobbed and gasped like he was struggling for his last breath of air in the uncaring void outside the window. It was raw, it was open, and it seemed damn near _endless_.

 

I wondered how many years of shit he was unpacking in that one, hard cry. The idea that me leaving him might’ve been in there made my stomach drop.

 

After a few eternities had gone by—or I had at least seen a few eternities worth of galaxies flick by the window—Nureyev’s sobs turned to wet sniffles and labored breathing. With the gentle whirs and clicks of the ship in motion, they were the only sounds in the air. I watched the thief pull himself up to his feet on the cabinet. He gripped the sides of the sink, staring at himself in the mirror.

 

“... If you clean your face, you can most _certainly_ look like you simply got high at 2 AM.” If I were any stupider, I would’ve laughed out loud.

 

I was close, though.

 

He rolled out a stretch of toilet paper and folded it neatly; every move calculated. He patted beneath his eyes and down his cheeks—how, I didn’t know. That shit felt like _sandpaper_.

 

As he fixed his hair and placed his glasses back onto his face, I realized what I was seeing. I was watching him _rebuild_ Peter Nureyev. The man who existed at the corners of every new name if I was lucky enough to catch him; the thief who reappeared when it was just him and me in the kitchen, drinking his morning tea and brushing off the last bits of sleep; Peter _‘hello Juno, it’s been a while’_ Nureyev.

 

That fucking bastard _always_ knew how to break my heart, huh?

 

I didn’t realize he had finished up until we were looking each other in the eyes.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

“I would ask how long you’ve been there,” he started, _way_ too slow after _way_ too long a silence, “But all answers can be quickly _and_ conveniently summarized as _too long.’”_

 

He flicked the light off in the bathroom, sending the hallway back into pitch black nothingness. I blinked and waited for my eye to adjust. Nureyev looked… _different_ in the cool glowing lights of the ship. Younger. Less tired. But, I think removing the harsh, bright _white_ did that to everyone. Everything was easier to handle in the dark, where you could only _just_ maybe make out the edges and only had to deal with whatever you imagined showed up between them.

 

He started to move toward me, heavily implying he wanted to get past me. I might’ve found it funny if it wasn’t such a bad, _bad_ time for comedy. You only got past anybody in the halls if you both pressed yourself to each side, and even _then_ you were close enough to see what was between their teeth.

 

I didn’t move. I was hypocritical, not _stupid_. I wasn’t just gonna let him leave after I pretty much watched him burst a tear duct.

 

“Juno,” he started, hands on his hips like a parent scolding a kid who’d done wrong. Never saw him as the swatting type, anyways.

 

“Do you wanna… uh… talk? About it?”

 

Dammit. _Real_ smooth, Juno.

 

“Am I giving you the sense I want to _‘talk about it,’_ darling?” Well, he wasn’t trying to push past me, which had to mean something.

 

“Listen, Nureyev, I’m not really good at this stuff, but Rita’s drilled into my head enough that you’re  _not_ supposed to just bottle stuff up and try and deal with it on your own, so I—”

 

I shut up _real_ fast when he stepped into my personal space and cupped my cheek with his hand. I felt my breath catch as he dragged his thumb back and forth along it. He hadn’t touched me like that in _so_ long, and every burning drop of want I thought I’d lost in the interim woke up from hibernation in my gut.

 

 _God_ , I wanted to take whatever made him cry like that and pummel it to bits.

 

Even if it was me.

 

Looking him in the eyes slingshotted me back to that first night. Those deep skies reflecting back specks of blue and green. With him this close, he blotted out every iota of starlight in the windows behind him, but the universe knew I didn’t need all that if I had him. I could feel his breath, and I knew mine was mixing with it in the silence between us. It felt like it stretched on forever, that quiet stillness. Probably wasn’t more than a few seconds at most, but from the way I could see his face soften and the corners of his mouth twitch up, I thought that maybe I’d done _something_ good.

 

“Thank you, Juno. Your offer means a _great_ deal more to me than you know.” He pulled back, and when he tried a second time to pass, I let him through. Apparently, I wasn’t as stubborn when you fucking caressed my cheek at 2 AM.

 

“Get some sleep, dear,” Nureyev called over his shoulder as he headed for the bunks.

 

I never got my water, and I never got any more sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> oh gosh!! i had a bad night and at the tail end of it decided to outlet the last of those feelings onto peter, as ALL the paragons of mental health do. it was just something to project some of my habits onto petey (having GOOD, and LONG, and HARD cries being the main thing) and it turned into something i was actually pretty proud of!!
> 
> thank you to my budding editor anna for taking the first crack at it and mainly just boosting my ego with "HOW DARE YOU"s, and my best seasoned editor ty for sitting with me to go through it with a fine toothed comb and make it this!!


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